Artist’s tintype photos capture Black life


 Artist’s tintype photos capture Black life

By Tia Carol Jones
“Head up, chest up,” Adam Davis directed the subject seated in front of him and his camera. The flash popped and Davis took the metal plate out the camera.

Davis is technically driven. He cares about how photos are made. When he first saw a tintype portrait, he thought the way it was executed was really cool.  He wanted to learn how to do it.

Chicago was just one stop on Davis’ tour of the United States where he took tintype photographs as part of a project he came up with during the pandemic. In early June, Davis set up appointments to take tintype pictures for his Black Magic project, which is meant to chronicle Black life and Black images. Davis likened each session to church, with Black people congregating and having a good time.

Early in the pandemic, Davis taught himself how to do tintype photography. As he has done with everything he does with photography. It started out with him just taking tintype photos of his friends.

The concept for Black Magic took place after he stepped away from taking tintype photographs of his friends, and after coming back from living in Mexico. He already had 20 portraits in two or three days. He had a spreadsheet of 400 people and reached out to them to see if they wanted their portrait taken.

The first intention was to turn the first 20 tintype portraits into an industrial deck of playing cards. But, he didn’t want to damage the originals. During a demo in Los Angeles, he proclaimed that he wanted to produce 20,000 tintype portraits of Black people.

“Tintypes shift the utility of an image, because it’s not paper, it’s not digital, you can hold it in your hand and it lasts forever,” he said.
Davis wants to try new things with the metal sheets the images are taken on. The concept of the project and the ways in which he wants to show the work, as it expands, will all be different.

Davis made a list of all the cities he wanted to go to and make tintype photographs. Chicago was on that original list. He started off in Cleveland, then to Detroit. He described Chicago as a “very, very Black city.” After Chicago, he went to Tulsa.

Davis has been thinking a lot about time: Thinking about the future and how gender and binary don’t exist and sexuality is fluid, and things are open-ended. Also, thinking about Octavia Butler and Nnedi Okarafor, two Afrofuturists authors, and the way their text have queerness as a focal point when it comes to Black people. Davis was intentional in making it known that he wanted to photograph queer Black people. He said it became a magnet in the responses he received of people who wanted to be photographed.

“When it comes to time and these objects, that are these photographs, they will last forever. Tintypes, kept in a box, or a frame, will last forever. So, at that point time doesn’t mean anything. What is time when you create something timeless everyday?,” he said.

Davis tells the people he photographs it will last beyond the lives of the people who sit for the phototypes. He also has been thinking about making jewelry out of the tintype photographs. He wants to reclaim the Black image in a tangible way, because it can change the way people see themselves. They are holding an image of themselves they are proud of, they care about, had a good experience with and will last forever.

“Every Black person deserves to be in complete control of a photo made of themselves that will last forever. This is just an attempt at doing that,” Davis said.

Barédu Ahmed, director of programming at Rebuild Foundation, said that Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation have a specific interest in visibility and the amplification of Black voices. That interest is reflected in the investment in the Black archives, which include the Frankie Knuckles Collection, Johnson Publishing Library and Ed Williams Collection.

“Adam’s interest in archiving Black lives was exciting to me not only because it is in alignment with Theaster’s practice and what we are doing at the Foundation, but because Adam represents a younger generation’s interest in Black history and the archival process- essentially carrying the torch lighting the way for the youth to continue this very specific and important work,” Ahmed said.

For more information about Adam Davis and Black Magic, visit Blackmagic.show.

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